When intense excessive light enters a solid-state image sensing device such as a CMOS image sensor, a reset potential decreases, and a whole image darkens. U.S. Pat. No. 6,803,958 is disclosed as an example of a proposal for preventing this.
When very intense excessive light enters in the above-mentioned proposal, the potential of a vertical signal line (VSL) at the time of reset level acquisition is monitored, and signal control is performed before a pixel signal undergoes analog-to-digital (AD) conversion.
In the arrangement and control described above, however, it is necessary to use a control circuit for controlling a pixel signal transferred from the vertical signal line (VSL), and a bias circuit for determining the threshold value of a pixel signal to be input to the control circuit, or a signal control comparator. This is disadvantageous in that the circuit layout area increases. This tendency is more significant in, e.g., a micro-pixel parallel read type sensor because these circuits must be added to each column.